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Lifting the veil in Turkey

Muslim women in Turkey have been given the right to wear a headscarf in religious schools and in religious classes at regular schools from next year, prime minister Recep Erdogan announced on Tuesday. Erdogan said the partial lifting of the ban came following public demand and to allow “everyone to dress their child as they wish, according to their means”.

The ban on headscarves in public places and in educational institutions in Turkey has always been a contentious issue ever since came into force following the military coup in the 1980s and was part of an attempt to take religion out of the public sphere. It has and still does restrict many Muslim women who give up academia as a result.

Since the creation of the Turkish republic in 1923 following the (Islamic) Ottoman empire’s decline, and the secular state founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey has been a country in which religion has no place in public environments. For Ataturk and many individuals like himself - men with qualifications and admiration for the West - religion had no place in the public sphere and strongly believed in the French view of the church and state separation. Religion was a private matter and should remain so.

Today the belief is still prevalent in Turkey that secularism means progress and that religion is oppressive and limits progression. The failure of the Ottoman empire is believed to have roots in religion; wrongly defending the faith in wars in the early 1900s.

The news follows the lifting of the ban in universities in 2010, but it is still in place for women working in the public sector. Although only girls in religious schools and during Koran lessons in regular schools can now do so, I’m still proud of the government’s decision, even if I don’t always agree with their policies.

In Turkey, no matter where you are, you will always be able to hear the call to prayer or see a mosque when you walk for a few minutes. It is a secular country but one with a majority of Muslim residents and history steeped in Islam, but it is always puzzling to consider why a country which prides itself on being more liberal than its Arab/Middle Eastern counterparts and subscribes to Western ideals doesn’t allow an individual to make a personal choice about what they wear.

Since the age of 14, I’ve been aware of the ban, particularly so during the period when I wore a headscarf (from the ages of 14 to 16) and went to Turkey. I found it odd to walk into my cousins’ school and be forced to take my headscarf off for a brief visit. It wasn’t because of the physical removal of the scarf that I felt awkward, it was the fact that I believed it was up to me whether to wear it- I chose to do so for personal reasons. (Disclosure: my mother doesn’t wear one.)

Critics have said the move is “enabling us to see the intense degree to which the education system is being made religious”, according to Egitim-sen education sector union, but that is an exaggeration. Although the prime minister, Recep Erdogan does appear to be more Islamic than some of his recent predecessors, not every decision he makes is wrong because he has a wife who wears a headscarf.

The assumption is that Erdogan made this decision for Islamic reasons- which is a possibility after his remarks earlier this year about a “religious youth”- but it can still be seen as a move in the right direction for greater religious freedom. Wearing a headscarf should be a right for female students, not an object which forces the individual to choose between education and faith.

On Tuesday night, Abdalaziz Alhamza, from the Syrian campaign organisation Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), received the prestigious Marie Colvin Award at the British Journalism Awards on behalf of the group.

RBSS has been reporting from the northern Syrian city, Islamic State's de facto capital, since 2014 on the violence carried out both by the extremist group and the regime of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The independent organisation comprises 18 journalists based in Raqqa who are supported by 10 more journalists, who publish and translate their findings between Arabic and English, and help their reports reach a wider global audience. The RBSS Twitter feed has almost 70,000 followers, and their Facebook page has over 560,000 likes, marking them as a major news source for the area.

Speaking at the British Journalism Awards on Tuesday, Alhamza said: “In 2014, we realised two important things: the first is that the outside world was not going to help us, and the second is that we had to do something. Anything. So we created RBSS.”

Alhamza further explained the campaign group's aims:

“Our goal was not only to expose IS criminality, but also to resist them. We did that by capturing and distributing images and videos of life in Raqqa under IS.”

“My colleagues and I never thought or even could imagine the level of suffering our people has been subjected to in the last five years. We learned the hard way that freedom doesn’t come cheap.”

“The scenes of extreme violence and humiliation the group visited on our city’s people. We wanted to make sure the world – even if it wasn’t going to help us – knew what was going on.

Though constantly living under threat, Alhamza’s speech last night showed the pride and importance that RBSS place on publishing the horrors of daily life within Syria.

“Our work shows that we can fight arms with words, and that ultimately is the only way to defeat them, and IS knows it.